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These people are to my ears increasingly indistinguishable from their liberal cohorts in their choice of interests and attitudes, and it is no surprise that they see qualities in Barack Obama that resonate powerfully with them. He is essentially one of them. A flinty Arizonan war hero and an Alaskan hockey mom do nothing for them because they do not know, have never known and will never know people like that anywhere in the cool cloisters of their privileged lives.

Dang, that is so dead on, a brilliant observation.

I've always respected C Buckley's writing, but I've always sensed that he was at best a political moderate who was trying not to offend conservatives. He proclaimed his atheism years ago, and it's not the Rand-type rationalist style atheism but more the "religion is icky" type atheism.

Hang out with the cocktail party set and you eventually get sucked in, I guess . . . let's not forget his little urination match with Tom Clancy after Clancy's Jack Ryan/Japan book. Like many elitists, he doesn't understand people who didn't get into the best schools. They're inferiors and, look, wheeee, Obama's an Ivy Leaguer, he's ONE OF US!!!

Thank you for your kind comments. The funny thing is, I also went to one of "those" schools, but having come from a far more modest background, I never let it affect me or define who I was. On the other hand, it did give me some insight into the lives and enthusiasms of people whom, prior to that time, I didn't even know existed.

When you grew up a (barely) middle class kid going to public schools in the 1960s, chances are you had no clue that somewhere out there lived an entirely different class of kids who lived behind gates, went to school in ivy-walled edifices, and wore matching uniforms. They ate picnic lunches on perfectly manicured lawns, went to "cotillions", whatever those were, and had maids, nannies and sometimes even butlers to greet them when they arrived home.

And for their part, I'm certain they gave not a moment's thought to the world outside the gates, where kids like me rode their bikes, flipped baseball cards, and played in makeshift tree houses and abandoned cars.

In a few years time, those of us who were good enough students or bright enough or just plain damned lucky managed to get ourselves into a "prestige" college, where we met for the first time the proverbial "Other Half".

They were a an odd lot, back then (the mid 1970s), and well defined by the word "preppy": the men all had Lacoste shirts in lime green or pink worn outside their L.L. Bean shorts and Sperry Topsider boat shoes. The girls wore neat pinstriped blouses and colored hairbands and always, a string of pearls. And they all played things like squash and lacrosse and did something called "crew", whatever the hell that was. I think there was even a Crew fraternity: "Ro Dammit Ro" (That's a joke, son).

But I guess the joke was on poor schlubs like me, because when the time came to graduate and look for a job, guess who already had all of the contacts and connections in the old-money Wall Street brokerage houses and oak-paneled law firms, you know, the ones with office doors with golden handles that weighed about 200 lbs.? That's when I learned what the preppy phrase "NOKD" really meant: "Not Our Kind, Dear".

I had the exact same thought. Christopher Buckley is a good comic novelist, but after reading his books I got the sense that the author pretty much subscribed to the worldview of the liberal establishment.

I guess Chris Buckely’s “conservatism” is one of inertia, not conviction.

I suspect that we will see at lot more of this denouncing of conservatives by Chris in order to gain the approval of the liberal elites. Chris Buckley will become the next David Brock!